


By Your Warden's Order

by Autumn_Llleaves



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3561590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autumn_Llleaves/pseuds/Autumn_Llleaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa and Lord Robert Arryn are on the run after escaping Baelish's schemes. They get to some unknown island, and Sweetrobin just wants to find himself some food while his lady cousin is sleeping…</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Your Warden's Order

"Alayne, I want some more berries!" Sweetrobin pleaded, tugging at his cousin's arm. He knew she was called Sansa in truth, but he couldn't get used to it. 

"My boy, I have none," she whispered as they rowed their clumsily made raft to the small island where Sansa had decided to hide for a while. 

"Gather them, then!" he insisted and added in a hopeful voice:

"I could help with it."

"Sweetrobin, please!" she cried. "It's winter already. Those we had were all dried since summer. Have you got any sense at all?"

He pouted. He didn't like his sense questioned. 

"Mother never spoke to me like that," Robin said accusingly. Sansa didn't reply. She was sitting with her eyes closed. He didn't like it at all. She was looking decidedly sick. Thin and weakened since they'd left the Gates of the Moon several moons ago. Sansa said they ran away because Petyr was trying to kill him. 

Robin doubted it from the start. No one could touch the Warden of the East! Right now he wished hard he hadn't obeyed his cousin and come with her. Petyr had always spare cakes and fruit for him, and the maesters were kind to him. Oh, to have an apple with honey…

They disembarked the dreadful raft at last. At time: it immediately fell apart. Robin was already a bit soaked. 

"I'm hungry," he repeated as Sansa laid their covers on the ground. 

"I'm tired," she whispered, so quietly he barely heard. "Robin, please let me rest."

"I _don't_ let you!" Robin groaned. "When you rest, you get odd. You talk in your sleep and say things I don't understand. Alayne, make a fire, ple-ase!"

She shook her head and all but fell on the covers. The boy leaned to take her hand, but was scared of the way her bones stuck out. 

Sansa lay very still. Sweetrobin was scared that she was dying, but she breathed steadily at least. And then there it came. She started to mumble:

"No… it's not me… I was loyal to King Joffrey… it is the amethyst… please… mercy… my father is a traitor…"

With some kind of mixed horror and fascination, Sweetrobin watched as she tossed in her delirium. 

"It's wildfire… wildfire… please don't kill me… Sandor, oh, _Sandor_ , take me with you… don't leave me here… Sandor… oh, touch me, please…"

Robin shuddered. His belly growled insistently once more. 

"Speak to yourself all you like, Alayne," he said spitefully. "I'm off to explore the island. There must be some food. Perhaps some berries under the snow."

He crept away from her sleeping form and walked into the wood with a determined air. 

After an hour or so, however, his courage began to fade, much as he didn't want to admit it. There was nothing but snow and fallen leaves around him, and not an edible piece in sight. Besides, he was growing immensely afraid of creatures such as bears or direwolves or Others or any of their kind who dwelt in woods. With Sansa by his side, he had felt at least safe. 

The boy walked back, deciding now to return. He could catch some fish in the water around the Isle, after all. For himself and Sansa. He had seen fishermen once or twice. 

But there seemed to appear several roads now where there used to be only one. Robin turned and walked straight and then turned around, and he wasn't obviously getting any closer to the coast than before. 

It was getting darker, and he began to feel truly worried. What would Sansa think when she wakes up? She'd give him fifty spanks for sure. As an owl screeched in a distance, Sweetrobin realized he would much prefer the spanks right now. 

"Alayne!" he wailed, too fearful to raise his voice above a weak squeak. "Sansa! I'm here!"

Then he ran. Ran hard and fast, until his untrained feet gave way. He lay on the ground, crying and begging in his mind for Mother, Sansa, Mya, Lothor, anyone else to appear, give him a cake and comfort him. 

Suddenly, he spotted bright lights in the distance. 

Unbelieving, half-scared, half-hopeful, Sweetrobin crawled in the direction. 

Through the bushes, he saw a crowd of several hooded men and two with hoods raised. One of the two was standing, another kneeling in front of him. Robin stared at them wide-eyed. 

"Are you sure?" the standing man, an elderly one, asked. "For the last time, I advise you…"

"Blast it all," the kneeling one said in a rasping voice a bit like Lothor Brune's. "I've got no other place to find solace in the world."

"Fine, then. Speak your vows of the Quiet Isle, Sandor Clegane of Clegane's Keep." 

Sandor Clegane? Not the one Sansa was always prattling about in her sleep?

The knelt man spoke:

"I swear to the Seven-Pointed Star to keep silence until my dying day comes. I swear to gather no earthly fortune. I swear to touch no woman, be it maiden or not…"

Wait, wait, wait. Even though Robin was vexed at his cousin now, he wasn't going to see her disappointed. She was kind to him and took care of him for a long while.

He forced himself to get up and put on the authority face, as Mother had called it before she was gone. Storming out of his hiding place, he stomped his foot and demanded:

"Stop speaking this! Right now!"

Both men looked at him with utter shock. Their hooded companions turned in his direction. Robin noticed that the kneeling man had a horrible burn on his face. 

"By your Warden's order!" he said importantly. "I'm the Warden of the East."

The scarred man got up:

"You mean you are Robert Arryn?"

"True Warden of the East and Lord of the Vale," Robin smiled proudly. "Could you give me some food?"

"Food we do have," the elderly man spoke up. "But first tell me, my lord, why did you interrupt Sandor Clegane's vows?"

Were they fools?

"Because I don't want him to take them!"

"Right you are. Why don't you?"

"There was something of not touching women," Robin said. "Well, I'm telling you: my lady cousin wants you to touch her!"

Everyone lowered their heads, the old man's face reddened. But Sandor Clegane did nothing but laugh, a long, growling laugh. 

"I'm starting to see jokes lately, boy," he explained. "Your lady cousin must be either blind or…" he stopped mid-sentence. 

"Brother!" he gripped at the old man's robes. Much like Robin himself did when he was confused. "Is it possible… that she's still alive? My lord, who's your cousin?"

"Lady Sansa Stark."

At hearing these words, Sandor let out an anguished cry:

"Little bird! She's alive! Tell me right now! Where is she?" he shook Robin by the shoulders.

"Sleeping, somewhere near the sea," the boy said. "She gave all the food to me, and she sleeps most of the day. And talks nonsense in her sleep. Of wildfire, and King Joffrey, and her father, and most of all you."

"Here," Sandor shoved a loaf of dried meat into his hand. "Eat it quickly and show us where she is."

"I don't know!" Robin cried, clutching the meat. "I got lost!"

"No use asking him," the old man said, taking Robert's hand. "I'll put him with the rest of the novices, and we'll go searching."

***

Fire was all around her, green and red and white. Sometimes, figures appeared in it, only to fade moments later. Sansa saw Arya munching on a lemoncake, Tyrion sipping down a goblet of wine, Margaery eating the ominous wedding pie. And heard all the time the rasping voice: "I could keep you safe."

"I'm starving!" Sansa cried. No one seemed to hear. "Help! Please!"

It was the Blackwater Battle all over again, the Hound – Sandor, she dared to call him by name in her dreams – pressing her down on the bed, suffocating but shielding, his lips on hers… then all of a sudden, his hand giving her a cup of spiced wine. 

She felt its taste. 

It tasted _real_.

Sansa coughed as the burning liquid slid down her throat, and the blurry vision cleared a little. But Sandor's face remained there, and she knew it was still a dream. Or half a dream. 

"Can you hear me, little bird?" his voice, somehow distant, echoed in her ears. Sansa nodded feebly. He put the wine to her lips again:

"Drink this, now. I know you're hungry, but after a long starvation it's dangerous to eat much at once. I fed you some mutton fat when you were unconscious. Now finish the wine and try to rest."

"Sandor?" she whispered, uncomprehending. "I'm awake? You are here?"

The burned man exhaled:

"Aye, little bird. I wouldn't have believed someone like you could long for the company of my sort."

Sansa drank the rest of the wine and smiled at him:

"I could. I do, actually. I… it was wrong of me not to go with you back then."

"You think so? My journey was such that King's Landing would have seemed the essence of delight in comparison."

"No," Sansa told him. "We would have been together. Oh, I don't know how I convinced myself to stay, after your kiss at that…"

"Kiss?" Sandor's mouth twitched. "What do you mean? I never kissed you."

Never?

Sansa felt cold stabs in her heart. All the time, even back in the Vale, and especially after it, on the run, she comforted herself with thoughts of him. The only man who longed, at the very least lusted, for her, not for the North and Winterfell. 

And now it turned out he didn't kiss her. Why then did she conclude he wanted her? He only wanted to take her to Robb and win some gold and favors. 

Her exhaustion took over again, combined with the shock. The world went back to haziness. 

***

Did his ungiven vows mean the Hound was back? Looking at the trembling feverish girl, Sandor cursed soundly. Oh, yes, he seemed to spoil everything in his life. The little bird had wanted him, as it turned out. A thing he only thought possible in his wildest deranged fantasies! Only a bugger like him could offend her at such a moment. 

Why did he have to correct her? Must she remember every walking moment of her life exactly as it happened?

Sandor groaned.

Evening came, and he fed Sansa a little more. She woke again to the wine's taste and looked at him sorrowfully:

"Forgive me, my lord. I have been impertinent… but you should excuse me… the fever… the confusion…"

Sandor silenced her with a kiss. A true kiss this time. Then another and another and yet another, then on the cheeks, on the nose, everywhere his lips could reach. 

"If I had kissed you that night, drunken animal that I was, I assure you, I wouldn't have stopped at a kiss," he rasped. "I planned it actually. It was your sweet voice that kept me from doing it, little bird."

She was smiling wide now, happy tears streaming down her face, her fingers softly caressing his scars. Sandor lowered his lips onto her collarbones, nearing her breast… when a very authoritative voice yelled from the door:

"By your Warden's order, stop it! It is to be done only when you're married!"

Sweetrobin marched into the room, very pleased with himself, and he honestly didn't know why the couple suddenly erupted into laughter.


End file.
